Much More Than 2 Cents About a Woman on the $10 Bill

WASHINGTON — The secretary of the Treasury, Jacob J. Lew, asked for the public’s comments on his newly announced decision to put a woman’s portrait on the $10 bill. And as might be expected for the first such redesign in the age of social media, boy — er, girl — is he getting comments.

On Facebook, Twitter, the Treasury’s website and elsewhere on Thursday, women and men offered ideas and more than a few critiques as Mr. Lew began the process of choosing, by year’s end, the first woman to be celebrated on the nation’s paper currency since Martha Washington appeared on $1 silver certificates in the late 1800s.

The favorites for portraiture on the first day since Mr. Lew’s announcement seemed to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady, feminist and United Nations ambassador; Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon; and Harriet Tubman, the slave-turned-abolitionist who was the top choice of an online petition earlier this year. Many Americans want to give a second chance to the social activist Susan B. Anthony or Sacagawea, the Shoshone guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition, who in recent years were honored on two $1 coins that proved so unpopular that their minting ended.

And many people, apparently unaware that, under law, those pictured on American bills must be deceased, expressed their preferences for the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Beyoncé and “Notorious RBG,” otherwise known as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court.

But at least as common as nominees were complaints. The Treasury’s decision to use the $10 bill instead of the much more numerous $20 note disappointed many, including those behind “Women on 20s,” the grassroots group that sponsored the online poll this year and petitioned the White House and Treasury. “Women asked for the $20 ... will get the $10,” one man posted to Twitter. “Even on currency women make half as much as a man.”

On the website of Women on 20s, its executive director, Susan Ades Stone, posted the news “in a fairly positive light,” she said in an interview, yet it drew “a flood of negative reaction” to the choice of the $10 note.

“Some people are saying it’s a lesser bill, and in fact it is a lesser bill both in value and in the fact that it is much less widely viewed and circulated,” Ms. Stone said. “It’s not the face we see at the bank coming out of the A.T.M.”

Mr. Lew paid tribute to the work of the advocacy group in a ceremony on Thursday afternoon at the National Archives to formally announce plans for the currency change. He said the government had announced in 2013 that the $10 note was next up for a redesign, which occurs periodically for all notes, mainly to guard against increasingly sophisticated counterfeiters.

Another controversy was incited by the Treasury Department’s plans to keep some smaller image of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father and George Washington’s Treasury secretary, on the $10 bill. Hamilton’s fans piled on with calls to keep him alone on the $10 note, and they joined advocates for placing a woman on the $20 note with a plea to #DumpJackson — Andrew Jackson, that is — from the $20 bill to make way for a woman.

That, in turn, set off an online debate over Jackson’s record of killing and forcibly relocating Native Americans and, notably, his well-known opposition to a national currency.

One woman noted on the Facebook page of The New York Times, “I echo the *many* people who are appalled that they are dumping Hamilton and keeping Jackson — reverse that decision and simply replace Jackson with whichever woman is selected. If she is worthy of being on a bill, she is worthy of not sharing it ... they haven’t done a bill with two men on it.”

Also dismaying to many Americans is that the new note will not be unveiled until 2020. Government officials said the time frame reflects the complexities of currency design, and additional complications related to another first: The new $10 bill will introduce tactile features that the government has been compelled to develop to help blind and visually impaired people identify the currency.

As Mr. Lew noted, 2020 will be the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which recognized women’s right to vote. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader and previously its first female speaker, called that fitting and expressed her own preference — Frances Perkins, the first female Cabinet secretary, an author of the Social Security Act and the longest-serving labor secretary, under President Franklin Roosevelt.

And why stop with the $10 bill? Mrs. Pelosi wondered aloud to reporters at the Capitol. “We might want to look at some other denominations as well,” she said. “Why should we be confined to one?”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat of New Hampshire who had introduced legislation to put a woman on the $20 bill, said in an interview that she would file a new measure specifying the $10 note instead. She acknowledged that an administration can redesign currency without Congressional action, but said, “This is just a way to keep the pressure on.”

Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, similarly said she was not disappointed that the $10 note was picked. “What we’re talking about is recognition,” Ms. O’Neill said. Whoever is chosen, she added, “should have a clear record — a clear record — of fighting for civil rights.”

Ms. O’Neill spoke from New Orleans, where the NOW board was meeting on Thursday. While the currency news was the subject of much talk that morning, she said, “I have to tell you, a lot of the talk was about Charleston, S.C.,” where a gunman had killed nine people at a historic African-American church the night before.

Ari Isaacman Astles contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Much More Than 2 Cents About a Woman on the $10 Bill. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe